GABALOS
For Herod the Great also kept a Fool.
HERODIAS
And people say that he acquired a second Fool before he let the first drown.
GABALOS
[Bows, smiling, then turns aside with a grimace.]
HEROD
This is Merokles, the rhetorician. His voice carries far. It is heard in Rome, when folks there would overhear my own.
MEROKLES
But I shall take no satisfaction in that voice till it may greet thee, mistress, with the cry "Hail to thee, O Queen!"